The Ars indie showcase: 30 games to watch in 2014

Laser-filled voyages to brooding teen dilemmas, indie's next wave has a lot to offer.

This year’s PAX East and Game Developers Conference left a lot of games in their wakes. Really, a lot. Way more than 30. But now that those shows’ hubbub (and resulting illnesses) has died down, we’ve had time to pare down our full lists from what we played to what we're dying to play again.

For this year's annual round up of noteworthy indies, we've settled on 30 gems, most of which we haven’t mentioned in Ars’ pages before. These showcase games have been enjoyed on show floors, at private parties, and between bathroom entrances. These are the up-and-coming games that, once they're available for everyone, we think you'll want to play everywhere, too. (In alphabetical order...)

Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche

Before the endless runner genre exploded, countless bus and train riders killed time with the endless jumper. Smartphone games like Doodle Jump and Ninjatown: Trees of Doom aimed casual gamers toward the skies. The genre is getting more sophisticated these days, particularly in the form of this summer’s Knightmare Tower.Avalanche 2: Super Avalanche looks to take the genre even higher.

The overlong name should probably be stricken. The original Avalanche was a rudimentary Flash game, and its sequel blows far past it. This is no casual Doodle Jump-style affair—blocks continually fall from the sky, but slowly enough so that you’re able to hop and climb up them to stay airborne and push your total height as much as possible.

Enemies and obstacles soon appear, including some particularly large beasts. But smart hoppers can find power-ups, like weapons, wings, and sticky gloves to even the battle. Keep on climbing, and customization shops, banks, and missions appear over time to keep the endless hopping interesting and diverse.

Though its colorful, pixelated style may have made it look like the most modest member of this round up, Super Avalanche’s to-the-seams amount of content makes it perhaps the most exciting of the bunch. That is, assuming you can actually hop high enough through the game's brutal upward climb to find all of it.

-Sam Machkovech

Below

Throw together the basic exploration structure of The Legend of Zelda games, the art style of Sword & Sworcery EP, the punishing survivalism of Don’t Starve, and the cinematic simplicity of Out of This World, and you’d have something approaching the experience of Below.

The demo I played recently presented a stark, minimalist world where it always seems to be raining until a descent into the dangerous, randomly generated caverns scattered around the island world. There, I scrounged for materials to light my way, gathered weapons to use against natural predators large and small, and tried to piece together a path around traps and hazards. This is not a forgiving game; a few wrong moves sent me back to the beginning of the cavern, forcing me to work my way back to my corpse just to get back all the stuff I had acquired.

It's all presented with a striking art style reminiscent of tilt-shift photography, with a hard focus on the area surrounding your character and a gradual blurring of focus as you go up and down the screen. The general lack of ambient music and text in the demo made it all feel quite lonely and claustrophobic too. Those looking for a good, long wander should keep their eyes out for this one.

-Kyle Orland

Bounden

Developer: Game Oven & The Dutch National BalletPlatforms: iOSAvailable: May 21Website

A whole lot of iPhone games use the hardware’s motion and tilt sensors to control on-screen characters. Fewer use it as a way to encourage you to move your own body in a specific way. Fewer still do that in such a beautiful and intuitive way as Bounden.

To start a game of Bounden, two players simply place their thumbs on the dots sitting on opposite ends of the iPhone and hold them there. A 3D-rendered globe appears on the screen with a hollow white circle hovering above and small raised dots popping up on the side. The game, such as it is, involves tilting and twisting the iPhone to move the globe so those dots line up with the hovering circle, like a key going in a lock.

As a single player game, this process would be singularly boring. But with two players facing each other, thumbs welded to either side of the iPhone, this basic mechanic essentially forces them into a dance routine designed by the Dutch National Ballet. Lining up those dots involves a whole lot of turning, spinning, and swaying that's loosely tied to the music coming out of the iPhone speakers (though the timing is not all that strict).

It's an elegant and intuitive interface that results in some amazing experiences. Some of the patterns require twisting under the opposing player’s arm or otherwise contorting yourselves into difficult positions that can't help but bring a grin to your face. The closest thing I can compare it to is Dance Central, but Bounden is much more free-flowing and abstract, not to mention it's intimate thanks to the requirement of a second player facing you. This is the kind of game I can see pulling out as a great icebreaker at parties, and it's wholly unlike anything else on the iPhone.

-Kyle Orland

Buffalo

A card game? What gives? Forgive us a rare dalliance into the printed side of gaming, but Buffalo took this year’s GDC by storm. It sold out at the fest’s official merch shop, making a bunch of tacky GDC ’14 hoodies jealous in the process.

The game appears pretty simple on the surface. One player is a judge and lays down two cards at a time, a combination of an adjective and a noun—“South American” and “twin,” perhaps, or “masculine” and “psychologist.” The rest of the players then shout whatever fitting name, real or fictional, matches that combo, and the judge gives cards to the earliest correct answer. Whoever has the most cards at game’s end wins.

Unlike recent card-group games like Cards Against Humanity and even Apples to Apples, Buffalo’s instant appeal is in freeing players from their own limiting hands of cards. Shouting and pleading become the default mode, and it’s always nice to shout the name of someone in the room to win a quick pair. (“Redheaded” and “journalist,” here!)

Beyond that surface-level fun, the game has some secret sauce. A few card combinations can prove head-scratchers, especially when they touch on gender and ethnic stereotypes; players can always grab a few more cards if the group blanks, but these moments were intentionally built into the game by its creators, a research team at Dartmouth College. Once you’ve played the game a few times, check out this PDF that touches on why the team made particular design decisions. (But definitely play the game first.)

-Sam Machkovech

Crypt of the Necrodancer

Rogue-likes are all the rage among in-the-know gamers these days, but it wasn’t so long ago that rhythm games were the brave new genre taking the world by storm. If those gaming trends happened simultaneously, we’d have likely seen a game concept like Crypt of the Necrodancer much sooner.

On the surface, it’s your basic randomly generated, top-down dungeon crawler, with plenty of little bad guys to fight and loot to collect. Where it sets itself apart is in the persistent beat that drives every action in the game—everything, from movement on the square grids to attacks to the enemies’ patterns, has to be entered using directional inputs on these downbeats, matching the spooky driving dance music in the background. You can stop and collect yourself, but there are bonuses associated with keeping a flow of inputs on every single beat, meaning you have to plan ahead to keep things moving smoothly.

Like the best Rogue-likes, you start out weak but unlock new abilities as you go. These include ranged attacks and magic spells that can heal you or hurt the opponents, all activated with diagonal combinations of directional input. Also in true genre tradition, you only have one life before you have to start over, forcing a good tug-of-war between careful planning and quick action.

Things are overwhelming enough with the keyboard, but the game always seems to draw a crowd at shows thanks to the USB dance pad support. The game is an incredibly good workout in this mode, and it requires quite a bit of coordination to pull off. Still, Crypt is definitely possible to beat with your feet after some practice.

-Kyle Orland

Darknet

For the most part, the Oculus Rift demos and in-development games released so far have been conversions of the kind of standard, first-person experiences you’d expect to see displayed on a TV screen or monitor, simply made more immersive by the use of a head-mounted display. It's interesting, then, that the developers behind Darknet are using the headset to power a puzzle game that usually wouldn't need any sort of first-person viewpoint to begin with.

After an intense trip down a tunnel of light at the beginning of the demo, Darknet places the player in front of a vast lattice of laser-light nodes meant to represent cyberspace in true '80s hacker movie fashion. The light puzzle gameplay involves hacking these nodes with a cascading virus while avoiding “eater” nodes that propagate out from node to node to thwart your efforts.

The short early demo I got to try didn't really have enough meat to sell me on the overall gameplay concept, but being able to crane my neck to glance around the vast wall of virtual Internet nodes was a heady experience, especially when everything around me descended into a wall of chaotic light during a cascading failure. Regardless of how the game itself turns out, its development seems important for proving that virtual reality games can be about more than wandering around virtual spaces.

78 Reader Comments

My personal top pick is Hyper Light Drifter for sure. It looks amazing and plays really well from what I've heard. Sentris is also up there, the Kickstarter demo looks neat. Disco Dodgeball is really fun currently but still rough around the edges. But its also one guy's pet project so I can't really complain.

I'm in disbelief that SUPERHOT isn't on this list. For anybody wondering what I'm talking about, check the link below & make your own decision. There's nothing like it on the market right now and it's a top indie game incoming for this year.

I enjoy these showcases for things to check out. My current indie game of the year so far has been Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Best writing I have seen in a video game in years plus an amazing setting. Also waiting for Hotline Miami 2 to come out.

Do Star Citizen and Pillars of Eternity have too much money to be considered "Indy" anymore? Maybe "obscure" would be a better term.

I suppose so. Still Hotline Miami 2.

"Indie" is turning into a strange descriptor almost as quickly as "downloadable" did. It's weird to see Supergiant at the PAX Indie Megabooth every year, for instance.

That said, after playing Sentris, Hyper Light Drifter, and Framed at PAX East this year, I'm looking forward to all three. Sentris is especially interesting... it's a weird puzzle/music game with no fail state. Just very zen.

Framed looks pretty freaking cool. I'll have to check that one out. Also I am really like the bomb diffusing concept game for the oculous rift. I wonder if the player is less of a human and more of a bomb robot, it would explain why they have to use such a strange input method.

I did not find any of the games here interesting, either. I simply do not find all these terribly abstract little games pleasing, they fail at keeping me entertained. I have a whole bunch of indie-games on my Steam-account and the ones I find myself enjoying even a little bit are more traditional in nature, ones that have an actual story to them and a start and an end. Shadowrun Returns comes to mind as a rather good example.

That said, the kinds of games I'm attracted to probably require a lot more resources -- both in people employed and in money -- and are therefore somewhat of a rarity. I wish someone would start keeping a list of interesting more traditional/less abstract indie-games so I would hopefully find more content I could buy.

Disclaimer: while I am not attracted to these kinds of games I can still appreciate the fact that a whole lot of people do and I do hold the scene as a whole in great value for shaking the pillars the big publishers have built for themselves.

I did not find any of the games here interesting, either. I simply do not find all these terribly abstract little games pleasing, they fail at keeping me entertained. I have a whole bunch of indie-games on my Steam-account and the ones I find myself enjoying even a little bit are more traditional in nature, ones that have an actual story to them and a start and an end. Shadowrun Returns comes to mind as a rather good example.

That said, the kinds of games I'm attracted to probably require a lot more resources -- both in people employed and in money -- and are therefore somewhat of a rarity. I wish someone would start keeping a list of interesting more traditional/less abstract indie-games so I would hopefully find more content I could buy.

Disclaimer: while I am not attracted to these kinds of games I can still appreciate the fact that a whole lot of people do and I do hold the scene as a whole in great value for shaking the pillars the big publishers have built for themselves.

I generally like abstract indie games for the same reason I like short stories: You can explore concepts that would not work as a full lenght novel/game. You can get pretty interesting stuff, even though many of them probably will not hold you for long.

Generally I too prefer "traditional" games though. Unfortunately good writing is harder than everything else.

BTW, if anyone is interested in a very traditinal game with interesting concepts and a pretty good story check out Iji.

I would have thought Planetary Annihilation should have been on the list games played at PAX that would be worth doing so again. While it may be from an established studio it is Independently being developed via kickstarter & steam pre-sales.

I've played the shit out of the Binding of Isaac and have been loving the Boilr and Balls of Steel tournaments in the game. So, I'm of course looking forwards to the remake/reboot, Rebirth (http://edmundm.com/post/73199145767/the ... h-2014-q-a). It's adding loads of new content and switching away from Flash(!!) -- it all looks set to be amazing.

Two days ago I started to play Factorio which just released a demo I think, it's in alpha at the moment, and my brain is probably going to explode in the coming weeks, I'm starting to lose sleep already..

For anyone who is super excited at the idea of connecting small factories and mines with small conveyor belts, robot arms and trains, give it a try!

It's getting a lot better, fortunately, but I still kind of lose heart when I see yet another retro pixel art platformer indie game. The indie movement was supposed to deliver us from all these dime a dozen games that all look alike, and yet in the past years whenever a new indie game was announced, nine out of ten times you could find the words "retro", "old school", "8 bit" or "nostalgic" in the game's description.

There's a distinct lack of excitement, in list or comments, for Divinity: Original Sin. It's been in beta for a month and is due for release late June. PC RPG by Larian and it's pretty great. Gameplay is turn based, there's an insane amount of customization, and the goal of the game is to have it beatable no matter how you play. If it ain't nailed to the ground or plain too big you can probably pick it up and loot. There are certain logical events that occur with magic (fire melts ice which leaves puddles that can be electrified) and the co-op is basically having two main characters, each being capable of accepting quests, providing input, completing them, or screwing the other one.

There's a distinct lack of excitement, in list or comments, for Divinity: Original Sin. It's been in beta for a month and is due for release late June. PC RPG by Larian and it's pretty great. Gameplay is turn based, there's an insane amount of customization, and the goal of the game is to have it beatable no matter how you play. If it ain't nailed to the ground or plain too big you can probably pick it up and loot. There are certain logical events that occur with magic (fire melts ice which leaves puddles that can be electrified) and the co-op is basically having two main characters, each being capable of accepting quests, providing input, completing them, or screwing the other one.

I hadn't heard of that before, or at least I can't remember having heard of it. Considering how much I love both turn-based strategies and RPGs the game sure sounds like it'd fit me like a fist in the eye. Also, having coop - play as a possibility is yet another plus in my book.

-Yes, "indie" means as much as it does for movies these days.-If you hate pixel art games just because they're pixel art, you're going to miss some amazing games. You don't have to play every pixel platformer out there, but to dismiss a game just because pixel art is cheaper to make, you're going to miss some interesting and novel games.

I almost don't even care if Darknet is any good, because the cyberspace VR experience is what I've been waiting for since forever. They need to throw some money at Neal Stephenson or William Gibson and make me pass out from excitement.

There's a distinct lack of excitement, in list or comments, for Divinity: Original Sin. It's been in beta for a month and is due for release late June. PC RPG by Larian and it's pretty great. Gameplay is turn based, there's an insane amount of customization, and the goal of the game is to have it beatable no matter how you play. If it ain't nailed to the ground or plain too big you can probably pick it up and loot. There are certain logical events that occur with magic (fire melts ice which leaves puddles that can be electrified) and the co-op is basically having two main characters, each being capable of accepting quests, providing input, completing them, or screwing the other one.

Pretty much lined up to be the best RPG for the year.

Original Sin looks like a pretty capable go at an Ultima 7 spiritual successor. Definitely more interesting than most of these tiny projects but it's also really stretching the indie definition to the breaking point. Larian has what, 50 employees and boxed games published on 360/PS3?

I would highly recommend UnderRail, which is a fantastic Fallout (1/2) style RPG, currently in early access. It's coming along nicely, each update is a huge improvement in balance/features/content, the dev takes fan feedback into account and is very active with his community. Too bad it's such an exception, since this how I assumed early access would always work.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.